


Catharsis

by Tishina



Series: A Pirate's Heart [3]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 00:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11955801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tishina/pseuds/Tishina
Summary: Andronikos has his own ways of showing he cares, and his own ideas about taking care of Misheen.I wrote this in response to a request for a "sweet-ish mini-adventure mini-date combo, on Belsavis." However, Niko grabbed the story and took it his own directions. While it does turn tender (of a sort) at the end, it doesn't exactly reach even "sweet-ish" and is frankly a bit dark, though I'm probably being overly cautious with both the mature rating and the "graphic violence" tag. It *is* darker than most of what I write. And there are oblique hints at the slavery and abuse that are canon for an SI. EDIT: I should make it clear there is no violence *at all* between 'Niko and Sheen, nor is this at all sexual.





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

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* * *

* * *

 The sound of a body at the back of their group hitting the floor was the first warning the small gang of escaped prisoners had that something might be stalking them. When they whirled, blasters drawn, there was only the Devaronian sprawled on the turf, sightless eyes staring toward the sky. None of the small gang recognized the source of the wound, a bloodless round hole that pierced him from back to front. Even so, they were still uncertain that one of their own hadn’t killed him.

So they were only a little on edge as they continued onward, leaving behind the stripped body of the Devaronian sharpshooter, but not terribly concerned. Belsavis was a dangerous place, after all, and no one in this gang had ever expected to die comfortably in bed.

Perhaps five minutes further down the road another body wordlessly hit the ground, this time a burly Twi’lek who carried a vibrosword with a familiarity that made it an extension of his left hand. Still no one recognized the peculiarly distinctive wound and there had been no sign of the attacker when they spun around, though two of the gang insisted they had heard a very soft humming sound just before he was killed. However the simple fact that he had died from exactly the same type of wound alerted the gang that they were, indeed, being stalked.

The third time, the leader of the gang, a huge Houk brawler who called himself Crusher, caught the soft hum himself and turned just in time to see the dark Zabrak woman appearing out of nowhere behind one of the two Rodians in the group. Before Crusher could react, she ran the Rodian through silently, devastatingly accurate with a double-bladed lightsaber that glowed with a malignant purple around a core of black. The Rodian was dead without even knowing he’d been struck. Before the Houk could alert the rest of the gang, the woman vanished back into the shadows with a smile so grim that it traced a sudden chill finger down the Houk's spine, her eyes locked with his, freezing him in place.  

They were not only being stalked, they were being stalked by a Sith. The last five of his followers surrounded the Houk as he tried to describe the woman. He could remember the long black leather duster the Sith wore, but almost every other detail was blurred in his memory by piercing green eyes that seemed more than a little mad in their intensity.

Now they moved even more cautiously, heading for the shelter of a nearby cave, all of them nervously watching both behind and in front of them. They were perhaps halfway there when the wiry Chiss slicer who’d been on the left of the group simply went missing completely.

At this point, the remaining members of the gang were not only uninterested in looking for the missing slicer, they broke, running for the cave in a free-for-all. Cooperation be damned, each man only cared about his own survival.

Only four reached the cave, and they turned in the entrance and formed a line across it in an attempt at defense. They could see the sprawled body of the fifth member of their gang about fifty meters away, a red-skinned Zabrak who had once been the Houk’s gunner. Panting and shivering, they tried to scan every centimeter of the field in front of them, blasters ready.

Their heavy breathing and the roar of fear in their ears masked the faint hum behind them until the Trandoshan tracker and assassin at the right suddenly crumpled, a purple and black lightsaber blade projecting, briefly, from his chest. Turning in horror at the realization that the stalker was _behind_ them, the last three saw the dark-skinned Zabrak grinning at them, her double-bladed lightsaber at the guard, glowing ominously in the dark.

As they tried to take aim, the  Rodian demolitionist fell forward onto his face as blaster fire from the field behind them echoed in the cave. Before the Houk leader and the Rattataki medic could register this new threat and choose a direction, a rapid series of shots took down the Rattataki at the same instant a precise lightsaber sweep removed Crusher’s head from his shoulders. The huge man slowly crumpled where he stood, and his head rolled to the feet of the small woman whose eyes almost blazed with fire at the headless corpse.

Andronikos slowly entered the cave, blaster still drawn as he checked the Rodian, Trandoshan, and Rattataki for any signs of life. The fire slowly faded to coals in the woman’s eyes, and she powered off the lightsaber and clipped it to her belt. Silently, she deftly caught the credit chips and other valuables as the human pirate tossed them to her, tucking them into a bag.

“Your plan worked like a charm, Sith. Glad you didn’t take any chances with this one. Nasty piece of work.” He shook his head at the Houk’s body before removing his blaster and the contents of his pockets.

“Now, care to tell me what this was all about, Revel? The Mother machine repaired the damage to my body and made it possible for me to survive the power I’ve absorbed from these spirits, but we need to get back to the ship to find out if they’ve found a way to silence them yet.” From the way she paused, Andronikos suspected that one or more of the Sith ghosts in her head had piped in.

“Well, I stumbled across a couple of references to prisoners I recognized when we were digging around in the databanks, trying to locate that ancient tech that patched you up. Thought you’d like to pay them an _un-_ friendly visit.”

The Zabrak snorted. “If this was about you getting some payback at some old enemies, why didn’t you just say so? Have I ever refused to help with something you wanted?”

“Well these were members of a band of pirates that the Republic finally caught up with.” He moved to stand next to the woman, looking down at the top of her horned head at the silver chains twined through silver-white hair.

She crossed her arms, glaring at him in evident annoyance. “Okay, I have no problems with pirates in general, or you wouldn’t have been sharing my bed for the past year. So what made you think _I_ would want to wipe out this particular band of pirates? I can think of better ways to introduce me to friends of yours than having me kill them?”

Andronikos edged a little further past her, putting her between him and the dead bodies. “No friends of mine. They weren’t just pirates. They were slavers.”

He was prepared for the way the fire in her eyes flared back up, and for the sudden elemental surge of Force lightning gathering around her hands. In fact, that had rather been the idea as far as he was concerned. But he took another step back as the stubble on his shaved head reacted to the proximity of that lightning. And another. Just far enough that the effect was subdued.

If this had been any other Sith, Andronikos would have been more than a little alarmed at the violence of the storm gathering around and outlining that dark figure. And had anyone been outside the cave in the field, certainly they would have fled from the unnaturally dark purple lighting flickering out of the mouth of the cave.

But this was Misheen. Misheen who used actions rather than words to speak. Misheen who he understood better than she did herself in some ways, for all that she’d told him remarkably little about her past. Misheen who killed pitilessly from the shadows, who would have laughed at the idea of a fair fight.

Misheen who was fire and ice and whose past was written on her body in the lines of scars that spoke louder than the words she never said. Who stiffened at any touch that restrained her, even a hand holding hers. Who still resisted in her sleep silently, hands clenched in the sheets, face contorted in agony and rage and fierce defiance.

Misheen who gathered a dark storm and blasted the bodies of dead slavers in the mouth of a cave on Belsavis with a dance of dark purple lightning that went on for a full minute, leaving behind nothing but ash when it finally died. Cleansed, purified. Their existence erased.

Andronikos watched silently, arms crossed, as she slowly drifted back to the ground with the fading storm, her arms sagging to her sides. When she finally turned toward him, there were still tiny flickers of purple lightning in eyes that danced on the edge of madness. But he waited, waited as patiently as he did in the middle of the night until the nightmares passed, knowing that any touch would do more harm than good until then.

Then she closed her eyes, her fists clenched, then slowly relaxed, and when she opened her eyes again, they were simply green eyes, calm and sane. But there was something in her face as she stumbled to him, words she could never say but that he heard as he folded his arms around her and held her as lightly as he knew how. Never confining, but saying with his embrace the things he didn’t know how to say and still hardly admitted to himself. Not yet. Maybe they never would.

He held her silently until the tension finally melted from her, her face buried in his shoulder, waited until she raised her head and very gently, almost self-consciously, kissed his cheek, her lips brushing the stubble with a touch far softer than others who knew her would have credited.

“So, um, Sheen, let’s head back and see if Zash and Ashara have worked out who can help you with those ghosts in your head.” He raised one hand to lightly smooth her silver-white hair, still alive from the lightning storm.

“Niko….” She met his eyes almost shyly, unable to finish the thought, but her use of his nickname, reserved normally for very private and intimate moments, was enough for him.

“Hey, anything for my girl.”


End file.
